A new report from The Hill says early drafts of former FBI Director James Comey's statement on Hillary Clinton's email case accused the former Secretary of State of "gross negligence" in her handling of classified information, not the "extremely careless" phrase in the final statement.
The change in language is significant.
Federal law states that "gross negligence" in handling the nation’s intelligence can be punished criminally with prison time or fines whereas "extreme carelessness" has no such legal definition and/or ramifications.
The tough language was changed to the much softer accusation that Clinton had been “extremely careless” in her handling of classified information when Comey announced in July 2016 there would be no charges against her.
The draft, written many weeks before the announcement of no charges, was described by multiple sources who saw the document both before and after it was sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee this past weekend.
Comey's final statement, while critical of Hillary's email usage, alleged that no prosecutor would pursue charges against actions which he described only as "extremely careless."
“Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of the classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information."
Meanwhile, Section 793 of federal law states that "gross negligence" with respect to the handling of national defense documents is punishable by a fine and up to 10 years in prison.
At least three top FBI officials were involved in helping Comey edit the statement, including Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, General Counsel James Baker and Chief of Staff Jim Rybicki.
Maybe this had something to do with that infamous airplane meeting between Bill Clinton and then Attorney General Loretta Lynch, just 6 days before Comey made his Hillary will not be prosecuted statement?
William Binney is a former high-ranking NSA official, turned whistleblower, with an interesting theory previously reported here: Binney believes the CrowdStrike claim that Russia-linked hackers stole emails from the DNC is "BS".
He says a DNC insider stole the emails by downloading them manually from the DNC’s server onto a hard drive.
Binney says timestamps indicate a download speed consistent with loading the files onto a thumb drive.
The US intelligence community accused him of advancing his theory to benefit President Trump, whom he supported during the election.
But now we know CIA Director Mike Pompeo met with Binney late last month under the advisement of President Donald Trump.
Mueller probe’s recent turn has been toward investigating Trump associates’ alleged financial crimes, and other allegations unrelated to the campaign.
At a Washington event in October, Pompeo said that U.S. intelligence had determined that Moscow’s intervention hadn’t impacted the outcome of the election.
All the intelligence agencies say Russians did the hack.
Of course the intelligence community previously helped President Bush justify the war in Iraq with "intelligence" they knew to be unreliable.
Binney, who has serious health problems and is confined to a wheelchair, said he traveled to the CIA headquarters in Langley Virginia to meet with Pompeo, who was accompanied by two CIA analysts who didn’t reveal their names.
A lawsuit was filed by Judicial Watch to determine when FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe recused himself from the Clinton email investigation, (after hundreds of thousands of dollars flowed to his wife's political campaign from a Clinton ally).
In October 2016, the Wall street Journal reported that Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, with longstanding ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton, gave nearly $500,000 to the election campaign of McCabe's wife just before McCabe helped oversee the FBI "investigation" into Clinton’s email use.
Mr. McAuliffe’s political-action committee donated $467,500 to the 2015 state Senate campaign of Dr. Jill McCabe, who is married to Andrew McCabe, now the deputy director of the FBI.
The Virginia Democratic Party, over which Mr. McAuliffe exerts considerable control, donated an additional $207,788 worth of support to Dr. McCabe’s campaign in the form of mailers, according to the records.
That adds up to more than $675,000 from entities either directly under Mr. McAuliffe’s control or strongly influenced by him -- more than a third of all the campaign funds Ms. McCabe raised.
Mr. McCabe did not recuse himself from the long-running investigation until Nov. 1, 2016, just six days before the probe was officially ended and eight days before Trump defeated Clinton.
First reported at this blog a year ago:
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has repeatedly denied that he received the two batches of purloined Democratic emails – one about the Democratic National Committee and one about Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta – from the Russians.
Assange and associates have said that at least the DNC emails came from a disgruntled insider.
Russian intelligence very likely continuously engage in hacking efforts to uncover sensitive information, but the Kremlin historically does not release any data they have hacked.
